 Brown
County is bounded north by Johnson, east by Bartholomew, south by Jackson
and west by Monroe counties. It is twenty miles in length from north to south,
and sixteen miles in breadth, and contains 320 square miles. It was organized
in 1836, and named after General Jacob Brown, one of the heroes of he War
of 1812. Brown County is divided into five civil townships, Hamblen, Jackson,
Van Buren, Johnson and Washington. Its population in 1840 was 2,364, and
is now about 4,000. The county is generally hilly, though it is interspersed
with many fertile valleys or bottoms, which constitute near one-third of
the whole surface. The timber on the hills is white and chestnut oak and
hickory. In the bottoms, it is walnut, poplar, sugar, hackberry, cherry,
buckeye, elm, etc. Corn and hemp grow well in the bottoms; wheat, oak, grasses,
etc., on the hills. There are in the county eight tanneries, carrying on
business to the amount of $50,000 annually, and employing twenty-five hands;
five cabinet and two wagon shops, five house carpenters, seven shoemakers,
seven blacksmiths, four stores, five groceries, one lawyer, three physicians
and eight preachers, and there are eight schools with about 160 scholars.
The articles exported are principally leather, wheat, pork, hogs, horses,
cattle, mules, hoop-poles, etc., to the value of $100,000 annually.
There are in the county six churches, one for each of the denominations of
Presbyterians, Methodists, United Brethren, Christian, (or Campbellite) Old
Christian, (or New Light) and Baptists. About 120,000 acres of land in the
county still belongs to the United States, the most of which is not of much
value. |
